 lml2000Whazzup
join:2000-08-17
Los Angeles, CA | reply to Markinsac
Re: SBC, Pacific Bell, and Project Pronto said by Markinsac:
I've been told by several sources that they are not required to share the Project Pronto terminals. If this is the case, then people who are too far from the Central Office and cannot get DSL via the traditional means have only ONE choice for DSL - Pacific Bell (with Prodigy for the email service)!! No competition at all??????
I think there's some confusion by what is meant by "terminal." SBC is required to provide remote terminal "access" to the CLECs, but SBC has interpreted the Telecom Act to mean that "access" does not necessarily constitute PHYSICAL access, but VIRTUAL access. By "terminal" I refer to the structure, or vault, that is installed in the neighborhood which houses the equipment you refer to. In this respect, the CLECs do have access to such terminals. The question is at what cost. In contrast, you might be referring to "terminals" as a direct connection upon which to nail a subscriber's copper to a DSLAM. This the CLEC is free to do once it has made the investment to co-locate at the remote terminal, or RT.
As I understand it, if a CLEC wishes to "co-locate" off the RT, it (1) must install and power up its own equipment in the RT PROVIDED there is room, then (2) sign onto to the OCD, or optical concentrator device, located at the CO, allowing the CLEC to tap into their subscriber packets that are mux'd with packets representing other subscriber networks, principally PacBell's ASI's network.
I think the more important issue to understand is the economics at play by co-locating off an RT where line density is sufficiently less than at the CO. Any CLEC wishing to co-locate off an RT is going to have to assure itself a certain capture rate of subscribers or its going to lose its shirt on such investment. The RT to serve my loop is designed to serve 650 homes. Most have next generation DLC (which incorporate DSLAM cards) to serve as many as 2016 copper pairs. Compare that figure with a CO, where co-location provides that CLEC with a market of tens of thousands of customers. Big difference. You can see why the CLECs might want a little bit of "financial assistance" from the gov't.
But bottom line, it's easy to see that customers served off an RT are going to have much less choice of who their DSL provider is. This is something IMHO, that the drafters of the Telecom Act didn't foresee but could have if they had the slightest clue about wireline infrastructure. The natural progression for telco infrastructure is to push the fiber, and the electronics (i.e. switches), closer to the customer in order to fatten the copper pipe and deliver advanced services not possible over longer loops. Inherent in this "natural progression" are economics that work against a government policy of co-location. Its as simple as that.
From a business POV, it is understandable why the incumbents feel that they should not be obligated to open up their facilities. First, it cost more money to provide more space to house equipment they may or may not ever be installed. Second, these facilities are being installed in the neighborhoods where space and operational efficient are placed at a premium in the effort to mitigate the negative "environmental impacts" of such a facility in a residential setting. How would you like it is instead of one PacBell truck parked outside an RT three doors down from your house, you saw a half dozen, one from each DSL provider. I don't think you'd like it, and that's the argument SBC has going for it when it comes to defending its platform. According, SBC has provided "access" to the CLECs by providing "virtual" access from the OCD at the CO.
Personally, and idealistically, a lot of this mess could be avoided if the telcos could be pushed beyond a neighborhood gateway platform to a FTTH solution where all the electronics are at the CO and at the customer's premise. No impact upon the neighborhood. Individual fiber strands run from ports in the electronics located at the CO directly to the customer's home powered ONI. If the customer wants a different provider, the end of his fiber is just unplugged from one port of one carrier's box located at the CO and inserted into another carrier's box. Sounds too good to be true . . . but eventually we'll get there. |
